The victims of the Niger delta oil spill in 2008 have rejected a 'derisory' offer of compensation from Shell, John Vidal has reported. About 11,000 fishermen and other people from the Bodo community, who lost their livelihoods following two spills, will now wait for a London court to decide on the level of compensation. Shell offered what amounted to £1,100 for each person affected by the spills.

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Foday was about 12 when rebel forces attacked his village and forced him to become a soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone. Film-maker Huw Poraj-Wilczynski met him in 2009 as he struggled to rebuild his life and provide for his family while working as a motorbike taxi driver in Koidu, a diamond-rich area in the east. He returned four years later to look for Foday and found him working as a police officer in Kenema, and feeling much more optimistic about his future.

Zambia has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, with many citizens relying on wood for fuel and timber. A pioneering reforestation scheme aims to increase awareness and halt the trend.

Coming up

Next week, we will be reporting from the UN general assembly in New York, specifically on the debates and meetings being held on the progress of the millennium development goals and what comes after the 2015 deadline. In the runup to the event, we're asking readers to share their vision for the future. How important are education and healthcare? Should governments be more responsive to their citizens? Is climate change the biggest challenge to be overcome? Get creative. Send your message as a photo or create a work of art. Write your message, pen a poem or compose a song and we'll feature the best submissions in our coverage of the general assembly.

Elsewhere, Claire Provost will be speaking to the new secretary-general of Unctad, Mukhisa Kituyi, and we'll be interviewing the head of the World Food Programme, Ertharin Cousin.

What you said: some of the best reader comments

At least 11,000 people have lost their homes and their living ... their families have been there for generations, part of a delicate ecosystem destroyed in two blows by these massive oil leaks. Shell should pay for the clean up whatever it costs.

TheDogShouterer remarked:

£1,100 per person. BP are paying out roughly $83,000 dollars per claim for the gulf oil spill. Surely Shell can spare a few more pence?

And Eccentrix added:

… the relationship between Shell in Nigeria and the Nigerian government [is] not always transparent. Consequently, compliance isn't enforced as strictly in Nigeria as it would be in other major oil/gas producing centres like the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico … If the most stringent standards were observed, these two spills under dispute wouldn't have assumed the magnitude that they did.

The Brics won't be growing forever (and thankfully so, for their environment's sake!) so the danger here is that African countries become entirely dependent on resource extraction only to be faced with a permanent commodities slump further down the line.